So far, President-elect Obama’s cabinet appointments have been great, and not-so great. And a couple have been blatantly stupid (like Education and Interior, for example). And while I have no question about Sanjay Gupta’s medical qualifications, I have serious questions about what he has said about universal healthcare, and the fact that he called Michael Moore a liar for facts presented in Sicko — when it was Gupta and CNN who had their facts wrong. As Paul Krugman says:
I don’t have a problem with Gupta’s qualifications. But I do remember his mugging of Michael Moore over Sicko. You don’t have to like Moore or his film; but Gupta specifically claimed that Moore “fudged his facts”, when the truth was that on every one of the allegedly fudged facts, Moore was actually right and CNN was wrong.
What bothered me about the incident was that it was what Digby would call Village behavior: Moore is an outsider, he’s uncouth, so he gets smeared as unreliable even though he actually got it right. It’s sort of a minor-league version of the way people who pointed out in real time that Bush was misleading us into war are to this day considered less “serious” than people who waited until it was fashionable to reach that conclusion. And appointing Gupta now, although it’s a small thing, is just another example of the lack of accountability that always seems to be the rule when you get things wrong in a socially acceptable way.
Crooks and Liars has the video up of Dr. Gupta in all his smarmy glory.
Shakespeare’s Sister agrees. Seems Dr. Gupta is not exactly a friend to working mothers, who he feels are responsible for the growing childhood obesity problem in America. Forget our culture’s obsession with fast food and the removal of exercise programs in our schools. It’s the working mothers‘ fault, of course!
This is “change” ?
